Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/276

234 ment of the country without substantially reforming one of its abuses."

In this atmosphere of doubt concerning the country's ownership and its title-deeds, and concerning the limits of the two great administrative provinces, complications, acrimonious controversy, and even collisions necessarily ensued. The Council and the Court were ranged in two hostile camps set over against each other on the borderland of debatable jurisdictions. The Company's officers claimed illimitable authority over the people of Bengal in revenue matters; the judges affirmed the duty of protecting the people from fiscal injustice; and very fair arguments might be found for either contention. The judges were quite as much bent on asserting their own power as on protecting the natives of India, while to the Council any sort of control or check upon their fiscal operations was highly inconvenient. The truth is that, outside Calcutta, there were no laws at all at that period, and that the Company had no regular authority and very little inclination to make any.

Out of these causes and complications arose the celebrated disputes between Warren Hastings and his Council, which kept the Governor-General and his councillors at bitter feud with each other, except when they united in a quarrel with the Supreme Court of Judicature. These matters fall within the scope of this narrative only so far as they illustrate an early stage in the experimental process of adjusting English institutions to the conditions of an Asiatic dependency; for